


A Wolf in Faded Blue

by rispacooper



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, American Civil War, First Kiss, First Time, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Masturbation, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rispacooper/pseuds/rispacooper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had almost never spoken back home, but this war was different. Here the youngest child of the Hales would often sit at a distance from Stiles and listen to him bicker playfully with Scott and spin dreams about the future as the two of them read letters from home. Stiles assumed Derek missed Beacon Hills, even if he had not spoken of it, and liked to hear home in their voices. It was easier to imagine that than to dream of other reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wolf in Faded Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coffeebuddha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeebuddha/gifts).



> Coffeebuddha asked for a Civil War AU, with smut. Only the American Civil War is not my area of historical knowledge, so there are probably inaccuracies. Absolutely no disrespect intended to those who fought. 
> 
> Also: I messed around with Teen Wolf/wolf stuff canon facts a bit. It's an AU. Deal. :) There's a whole universe here that I will probably never write, but it would be Harlequin and *epic* I'm telling you.

When it became clear that Scott would live, Stiles finally left the blood-soaked ground around the surgeon’s tent and stumbled back toward the campfires of his friends. There were smiles from the men he passed, and offers of illicit homebrew, which he accepted a few slugs of before walking on. He wiped the back of his hand clumsily across his mouth, but no one cared or minded that he made a mess down the front of his coat. A few drops of liquor wouldn’t make much difference with all the dirt and dried blood, and the men in camp had other things on their minds tonight. 

Stiles moved from campfire to campfire in a vague circle, accepting congratulations and another mouthful of whiskey along the way, though he had eaten no supper and was not likely to have much breakfast to look forward to. Tomorrow there would probably be no rabbit outside the tent he shared with Scott as there had been on other mornings. 

No rabbit. No breakfast at all save some hardtack. But Scott would live. 

Stiles would not be stopped for any more liquor, or smiles, or eyes full of questions. He hurried on, stumbling with exhaustion, until he found what he was looking for, _who_ he was looking for. Derek Hale was curled in on himself in front of a small fire at the very edge of the camp. His coat was loose and unbuttoned at the top, though Stiles could not imagine anyone at that moment daring to order him to button it. 

Derek sat close to the dark border where the clearing ended and the woods began, but that wouldn’t bother him. Stiles was surprised to find him around the light of the fire. Derek did not sit around a fire when fires were available unless it was the dead of winter or there was space near one that Scott and Stiles had lit. He never spoke when he appeared in the ring of light from their little cookfires. Most of their regiment was from the counties upstate, but few had been from Beacon Hills besides Derek and Scott and Stiles. They had almost never spoken back home, but this war was different. Here the youngest child of the Hales would often sit at a distance from Stiles and listen to him bicker playfully with Scott and spin dreams about the future as the two of them read letters from home. Stiles assumed Derek missed Beacon Hills, even if he had not spoken of it, and liked to hear home in their voices. It was easier to imagine that than to dream of other reasons. 

Beacon Hills did seem a lifetime away. Stiles shed tears over the letters received from his father as Scott wept over the letters he had not received from Allison Argent. Derek had been close to his family, yet as far as Stiles knew, he either did not receive letters or did not share them, not from his kin or from a sweetheart. Derek had left no girls behind, despite how women in every town they passed near tried to catch his eye, even some of the secesh ladies. 

Stiles could not blame them. The Hales’ youngest had grown into a man of broad shoulders and a steady gaze. His face was more than handsome, even unshaven and unkempt it drew attention. Stiles knew part of that was due to what, to _who_ , he was. The Hales were a remarkably beautiful family, fiercely so, especially about the eyes, which glowed at times in ways that most in town didn’t speak of out of politeness, or fear. Derek had been gangly as a boy, but where the war and its privations should have kept him that way, he’d grown into himself somehow, become more Hale than any of the other Hales that Stiles had seen, save his father, the clan’s patriarch, and possibly his sister, the long-vanished Laura. 

Derek Hale looked like an underfed wolf, and Stiles—and now most everyone else—knew just how close to the truth that was. 

Which made it damn surprising to find that Derek was not alone. 

By rights the soldiers around Derek should be more afraid of him than ever. This was the man they had seen emerge from battle drenched in blood that was never his own. There were stories which Stiles had never doubted, of an ambush in which Derek had torn the flesh of a man’s throat with his teeth before gutting him with his bayonet. Most of the men would swear that they had seen Derek struck by shot after shot, but when the smoke had cleared and there was nothing to do but look for the living, Derek had walked away with holes in his clothing and nary a scratch on him. Some nights his eyes seemed a bright, blazing blue. He rarely spoke to anyone, keeping to himself even in town when others were finding drink and women. The list of reasons why his name was said with hushed awe was long. Stiles could only wonder what would have become of Derek around these men if Derek had not been in the front of nearly every skirmish, and had such a skill for hunting when men were hungry.

None of that seemed to matter any longer. Stiles stopped several yards away and watched some of the men approach Derek. He couldn’t hear what they said to him, but he could see their hands land on Derek's shoulder before they backed away again, as if Derek was still a beast, but now he was _their_ beast. He had fought with them and for them, and now he had saved one of them. The weakest of them, Scott, with his friendly smile and sickly body. 

A sickly body that never could seem to find air when Scott needed it. Scott should never have come here, would not have if he hadn’t followed Stiles. His loyalty and courage had left him bleeding from the belly and ready to die. 

For a moment Stiles was there again, breathing hard from carrying Scott so far, watching the nurse try to hold Scott still while he bled rivers onto the table and the useless, son-of-a-bitch doctor shaking his head. Stiles shouted something, he couldn’t remember what. He could only recall the hoarse sound of his voice, and then Derek’s hands pulling on his arms to bring him away before Derek took his place at Scott’s side. 

The rest was sharp but scattered sensations, and sights clearer than photographs. Scott writhing. Stiles imagining the letter he would have to write to Mrs. McCall. His life without Scott. Then just Derek, his eyes blazing. 

People married into the Hale clan, Stiles knew it like everyone in Beacon Hills knew that the Hales’ livestock was never attacked by wolves, and neither was the stock of those on good terms with them, and that the Hales didn’t spend much on candles despite having money and a big house. People who weren’t what the Hales were married into the Hale family, people who sometimes grew to have glowing eyes as well, humans who sometimes did not, and who died suddenly after a strange, painful illness, and who were wept over by the Hales and buried in their family plot. 

Stiles knew that, but when Derek looked at him with those eyes from over Scott’s weakly struggling body, asking him a silent question, he'd given a nod. Derek had opened his mouth to reveal teeth, inhuman, animal fangs, and bent down to sink those teeth into Scott’s side. 

The surgeon exclaimed a moment before Scott arched up from the table and screamed. The others, anyone else watching, had made noises behind him that Stiles barely recalled, as he'd been watching Derek finally pull away. Derek had put a hand over Scott’s shoulder and held it still until curious black lines had curled up from his fingers to his wrist, and then up his arm before disappearing. Stiles didn't know what those lines were, but he knew that Derek's touch had calmed Scott down and let him fall asleep.

Perhaps he should have been shocked, or worried that he had chosen wrong for Scott, but Stiles had thought only that it was hard to kill a Hale. If Scott survived becoming one, he would survive anything. 

Now the night was passing and it was clear that though he was still in pain, Scott was alive. Scott was healing and he was alive. As it was clear to all that Derek Hale was more than a man. 

There was a bottle in front of Derek, the contents unmarked and dark, someone’s supply of whiskey at his feet. Stiles couldn’t tell if he’d touched it, but he deserved the offering. At the moment he deserved everything as far as Stiles was concerned, and not just Stiles because thought him handsome. 

Stiles was flushed with relief and liquor and the thought only made him grow hotter. Derek had revealed himself to the world for the sake of someone who had never said more than a few words to him. Stiles could stand to be just as brave, even if disgust awaited him. 

He gathered what courage was left him after today and took a step a forward to join Derek at _his_ fire for once. He was certain he had not made a sound, but at his approach, Derek raised his head. Derek's eyes were wide and alert before he got to his feet to stalk away from the orange light. 

In the darkness, Derek disappeared almost immediately. The night was cold, and Stiles’ coat was thin, and unlike Derek, Stiles did not have an unnatural knowledge of where the sentries were. He knew it was best to not chase after Derek, but he followed after him with scarcely a moment's pause.

He tripped more than he walked, letting his eyes grow accustomed to what light there was. He was annoyed that he had to find his way like this, up until the moment he realized he was on the edge of a small clearing. The moon was only half full, but it illuminated the lonely figure of Derek Hale. Derek stood partially turned in Stiles’ direction. He had his hands out before him and Stiles had the impression that he had been staring at them. There were splatters of dried blood on them, or rather, patches of dirt where Derek had wiped his hands on the ground. 

Derek's shirt was tattered. Stiles imagined Derek’s sisters sending him a new one, all his sisters except for Laura, who was rumored to have cut her hair and put on Derek’s clothing and run off to enlist as a man. Derek might sew the tears in the shirt himself in the meantime. The tears could be easily eliminated. The stains of Scott’s blood could not. 

“Thank you.” Stiles had to force himself to speak normally. He wanted to shout like a giddy, horny boy. “Thank you. Truthfully, I cannot say that enough. I don’t have the words to tell you what this means to me. All I can say is thank you.”

Derek’s frown was a familiar sight, even before the war. He had not worn it so constantly then, but he had worn it often enough. Stiles’ had once heard Derek’s father call Derek a ‘serious boy’. The war had only worsened this trait. Then again, Stiles had often been called ‘mad’ and ‘a fool’ by his own father. He did not think the war had helped him in that regard either. But his madness had proven useful on more than one occasion, as had Derek's serious nature and hidden talents.

Derek smoothed out his frown, but he shook away Stiles’ expression of gratitude. “It was nothing.”

Stiles snorted. “It was a great deal more than nothing, as we both know.” He could not be more direct without knowing the word for what the Hales were, but he got Derek’s attention. Derek appeared stiff and uncomfortable, as he usually had back home when anyone outside his family had spoken to him, especially when that person had been Stiles. Derek usually looked to his family before answering questions.

It was funny then that Derek's family hadn’t wanted him to enlist and he had. That first year Derek had been gone, in between reading the paper for news and waiting to turn eighteen, Stiles had often wondered if following the drums had been Derek’s first real act of defiance, and if so why he had done it--joined a war he hadn’t needed to join. Stiles knew why _he_ had, of course, but Derek’s reasons were a mystery. His family didn't own slaves, but they weren't outspoken about the cause of abolition like Mrs. McCall.

Derek glanced away, then brought his gaze back to Stiles’ face. “The McCall boy. He’s from home. He’s…” Derek didn’t finish that thought but let out his breath in a rush. “He will live.”

Stiles was heading toward drunk, but those were the kind of words he could hear his whole life long. He leaned back and sighed in relief. In comparison to that, his multitude of other worries seemed small.

“I didn’t want to have to tell his mother. Or my father,” he confessed, feeling petty and small. Before today, he wouldn’t have been sure that Derek Hale would care about him and those dear to him. But Derek considered him for a moment before giving a shudder.

“My father will be pleased that Scott didn’t die,” he admitted to a worry of his own, “but… he will not be happy with me.”

“Why not?” The same curiosity that had led to a childhood investigating beehives made Stiles step toward Derek. 

A pained expression crossed Derek’s face, as though he were struggling to explain himself. “I should have asked. If not my family, then I should have asked Scott before I gave him the bite.” Derek paused and peered at Stiles. He was so still the trees seemed capable of more movement. “Humans often don’t consider this a gift, even the ones willing to look the other way.”

“Why wouldn’t they? I…” Stiles knew he should stop to consider his words, but Scott was alive because Derek had saved him. Even if he hadn’t, Stiles had always found the Hales fascinating. “I think you’re—it’s—incredible.” Derek looked intently at him then, so intently Stiles felt like Derek could see inside of him, even every beat of his heart. Stiles darted out his tongue to wet his lips. Derek watched that too. “You saved him,” Stiles finished, weakly. There was so much more to say, but he could not think of how to say it.

Derek stared down at his hands again after a moment. “Most people think we are monsters. Or strange. The Argents--” Derek stopped and swallowed. Stiles scowled, remembering now how Derek had sometimes looked at Kate Argent. He had thought--had hoped--Derek hadn't really pursued her. Stiles could imagine many things but he hadn’t wanted to imagine that. He was suddenly grateful the Argents were far away, and had not a drop of remorse for the thought.

Stiles _wanted_ to live as the Hales did, independent and strong, surrounded by family. He had tried to belong, especially when still a boy, chasing after the most beautiful girl in town with everyone else. But deep inside him he’d known Lydia Martin would never look twice at him, and he had only done it so no one would question where his eyes had truly wanted to rest.

He looked at Derek Hale. If Stiles had a hard time with remorse, he had an even harder time with shame, to his father’s despair.

“After today?” Stiles found it hard to fathom that he had to remind Derek of what exactly he had done. Skinny and sickly though he was, Scott was well-loved. It was difficult not to like someone as sweet-natured as Scott. Many called him friend. And Derek had saved him. “Not one man in the regiment thinks that of you now,” Stiles insisted fiercely, wishing for another drink if it would help him. “They’re grateful you’re here. As… As I am.”

His heart gave a stuttering beat when Derek considered him but ten Derek broke their shared gaze. He had forever done that back in Beacon Hills, as if everything about Stiles unsettled him and he could not bear to look at Stiles for long. Perhaps Derek had felt free to stare at Kate Argent because she had not unsettled him. Stiles wondered about her with a sudden and odd viciousness. Except for Allison he rarely wondered about the Argents. They were a well-known family in town, nearly as old as the Hales, though with branches in Manassas that had led to several of them joining Lee’s forces when war had been declared. They had never got on with the Hales, something of little importance even in a small town, until there had been war, and Kate Argent had left for Virginia while Derek Hale had answered Mr. Lincoln’s first call for men.

That first year Derek had been away Stiles had loved and hated the newspapers. If not for his father, Stiles might have lied about his age and enlisted too. But he had finally been of age when Derek Hale had briefly returned to Beacon Hills on furlough, thinner than he had been, with eyes that looked directly at Stiles for the first time. Stiles hadn’t seen a trace of the Derek that had been, the quiet one who hadn’t said much, or looked to his father. Derek's favorite sister was gone, as was his uncle and several of the other Hale men. Their womenfolk had seemed subdued and sad with them gone. Without most of his family around, Derek had seemed equally alone. There was not much difference in age between Derek and Stiles, but it had never seemed less than it had then, with Derek Hale lost in his own town.

It wasn’t the only reason Stiles had enlisted. Curiosity had been a part of it, curiosity and boredom. The world outside Beacon Hills was large and Stiles wanted to see some of it. Scott had too, or at least had desire to leave town after Allison Argent had broken their engagement. For the most part Stiles’ other reasons seemed childish now when what he wanted more than almost anything was to just go home. It was the thing he wanted more than even home which hadn’t gone away.

“I haven’t done anything.” Derek dismissed his actions and made a face when Stiles opened his mouth to argue. “Stiles, we both know I’m not that brave.” Derek had never called Stiles by his nickname or any other name before, or spoken so boldly about what he was. It took Stiles a moment to recover.

“You can still die, can’t you?” he argued, reasoning things out like the lawyer his father wanted him to become. “So what if you’re stronger than anyone else? Or if it’s difficult to kill you. It means we have an advantage that I’m frankly grateful to have. If it even _is_ an advantage. The Rebs could have wolves too for all we know.” He said 'wolves' without meaning to and the word hung in the air for far too long.

Derek stared at him, but rolled his eyes when Stiles pushed out a tense breath. “Don’t make me something I’m not, Stiles.”

“Like a hero?” Stiles couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You saved Scott. Scott means the world to me.”

“He’s your pa—family.” Derek said it like he understood how, though there was no blood between them, Scott was Stiles’ kin, and had been since the day the Stilinskis had moved to town with their foreign last name that young Scott hadn’t been able to pronounce. They had been friends for as long as Stiles had been Stiles.

“Yes.” If Derek understood that, then he should understand everything Stiles hadn’t said. It was a fight to go on with the way Derek watched him. The old Derek would have looked away by now, but as the war went on, Derek resembled more and more what he was. Stiles was hardly a boy anymore either. He kept his chin up. “You saved his life today, and you risked your own. I will give you my thanks if I have to hit you with them.”

Derek reached out to put his hand on the tree beside him. Stiles had never seen Derek on the battlefield, not for more than glimpses amid smoke and panicked men, but it was easy to imagine that hand with a wolf’s claws. It was nearly enough to make Stiles expect a dog's growl when Derek spoke; it was a surprise to hear Derek's mellow voice, how even it always was.

“You’ve thanked me. You don’t have to stay. I know you never could stay still for long.”

A few incidents from Stiles’ childhood would forever haunt him. Even Derek Hale had heard the stories. Stiles hadn’t known that. He frowned.

“I know I don’t have to,” Stiles snapped, earning him a glance of surprise.

“You aren’t afraid of me.” Derek didn’t exactly make it a question. “The others still are, even if they hide it now.” He paused there, seeming to reconsider Stiles. “Any human with sense would be.”

Stiles narrowed his stinging eyes. He’d never thought to truly talk to Derek Hale, or that any conversation between them would go so strangely. But he reflected back on what Derek had just said and realized Derek’s words had held an awful lot of certainty.

“How do you know for sure that they're afraid of you?” He couldn’t help asking, but he shook his head before Derek could answer. “No.” He thought about it. He would swear that he did. But his response came out quickly. “No, I’m not afraid of you.”

“I bit a man’s throat out.” Derek said flatly, then exhaled a bitter breath. “And a man is not a deer.”

Stiles went still. He had thought it in Derek’s nature to kill, but wolves in the wild did not, except for food and defense of their pack. Stiles looked back toward the hopefully sleeping regiment. Even an army seemed quiet from a distance, but it wouldn't be once the artillery was in use and the guns were firing.

“You saved Scott.” It was in Stiles’ nature to argue.

“And in doing so, I could have killed him.” Derek frowned back at him. Stiles threw up his hands in exasperation. “But you didn’t. Tonight you saved him and when you did you saved _me_.” He stopped on a harsh breath. Derek raised his head, as alert and wild as he’d seemed before while looking at Stiles over the top of a cookfire.

“Stiles?” Derek kept staring at him like that. He might truly not get what Stiles was aiming at, but he could not expect a different response, not when he kept looking at Stiles as though he was seeing inside him. Stiles took a deep breath and stepped closer until his hands were on Derek’s chest, sliding slowly up over cotton and brass buttons to Derek’s shoulders. He didn’t care about dirt or drying blood. He didn’t care that there might be blood in Derek’s mouth. It was only Scott’s, and that couldn’t hurt him.

He looked into Derek’s eyes, their clear, soft color, and remembered Derek waiting for Stiles to decide before he had bitten Scott. Before he had damned Scott, or saved him, and damned himself. Stiles licked his mouth and then looked down, studying Derek’s parted lips before he bent in to kiss them.

He and Scott had practiced kissing once, as boys. And on Christmas Day years back, the tanner’s daughter, Erica, had kissed Stiles behind the old meeting house before running off. He knew enough of what to do. He kept his breaths shallow and counted to three before he pressed in further, opening his mouth to run his tongue along Derek’s lips. They were warm, like Derek's breath, like his skin when Stiles uncurled his hands against his neck and spread his fingers out to map every unshaven inch.

Stiles meant no offense to the memory of Lydia Martin, but it was touching a man, this man, that got his blood flowing.

Derek was still. Stiles figured it likely he was horrified and regretted that. It felt beautiful to him, Derek’s breath mingling with his, their bodies close. Stiles' heart was loud in his ears, louder when he slowly pulled back. He could not catch his breath, but he looked up into Derek’s eyes. He could not yet take his fingers away from Derek’s skin. 

Derek didn’t taste like blood. He tasted like the same fiery brew in Stiles’ belly, though he did not seem at all drunk. He ran his tongue along his lips and stared back at Stiles. A line appeared between his eyes.

“What is it? You want to say I’m a sinner? That you don’t want me? What?” Stiles demanded, impatient, but then, he had been thinking of this since his voice had deepened. Under his hands was flesh and muscle, filthy cotton in the shape of a uniform, and beneath that was the youngest son of the Hales, a wolf in faded blue. A wolf in Stiles’ arms.

“I didn’t save him for this.” Derek looked so earnest that it was Stiles’ turn to frown. He bent in again, pressing a harder kiss to Derek’s mouth to make it clear. This was not gratitude. This was desperation. This was bravery. Derek had done better than this today. Stiles would not be shown up, wolf or no wolf.

“You,” Stiles told him, his heart like thunder, his breath too fast against Derek’s jaw. “You don’t.” He wanted to groan and held it back, but only so he could moan along the column of Derek’s throat. “How can you not understand yet? I am the most obvious man in Lincoln’s army.” He remembered enough to keep his voice down to a whisper, but that was all. He was a man, as was Derek, but it no longer seemed queer that Derek wasn’t pushing him off. Derek was breathing harshly, quivering with what could have been fright but which seemed warmer than that, more _obvious_ than that. Stiles raised his head, but only to shake it at Derek. “Thank you for the rabbit.”

The _rabbit_. Stiles felt foolish and slow.

Derek kissed him with his hands fisted in the thin and already patched shirt that Stiles had taken from a dead man a week ago and which Stiles had ruined today when he had pulled Scott from where he had fallen. There would be more dead from which to take another. Stiles would mourn them later, when he wasn’t feverish with kisses. Derek moved like he always did, indecisive at first and then too fast for Stiles to fully see. But he gasped into the hot mouth over his own and shoved forward.

Derek Hale went where he was pushed. Stiles could not fully believe it but he wasn’t going to question it either. Derek made small, surprised noises against him, eager sounds that reminded Stiles of himself on nights back home when he’d furtively taken himself in hand. The struggle to keep silent was so much worse now that he could tell Derek was in the same pained distress. Stiles quieted him by running his palms over his skin, beneath his coat, then licked Derek’s mouth open again so that he felt each starved moan against his teeth. 

The rest of the world might not hear, but Stiles could feel it all, and shivered before he hitched his hips closer. Derek would feel the heat pressing into him, the hot length of Stiles' prick, he would know how much Stiles wanted him. He should stop then, if he wanted to stop, not shudder against Stiles and throw his head back.

Derek’s hands were tight, his knuckles bruising against Stiles’ chest. Stiles pushed against it to kiss his throat, freezing only for a moment when Derek could not hold back a cry this time. Then he lifted a hand without thinking. It did not matter. Derek’s breath was moist along Stiles' wrist, his teeth blunt and sharp at once, but he went quiet, panting softly into Stiles’ skin.

He didn’t speak, not even when Stiles pawed, one-handed, at his coat, and then at his trousers. Stiles’ face was stinging, but his body was strung tight, and when he first touched Derek intimately along his cock, Derek drew in a breath as it grew and hardened in Stiles’ hand. Stiles' palm was dry. At home Stiles would spit into it to ease things along, so he did that now even though it wasn’t his cock he was stroking. There wasn’t room, but he pressed closer, moving his hand in small, shortened tugs, still too dry and hindered by layers of cloth.

Derek moved into it, shifting his legs apart with a noise of hurt and disbelief. Stiles twitched forward in sympathy. If Derek was like him, then he had to move during this. He’d have to move rise up to meet the fist wrapped around his cock. Stiles tightened his hand and bent his head. He bit down on a mouthful of Derek’s tunic coat, tasting dirt, iron, and felt a satisfied surge deep inside him that made him bite down harder.

Even muffled, the sound Derek made was rough. Stiles couldn’t speak to ask how Derek knew what he was feeling, he only knew that Derek did. Derek was twitching into his hand, the head of his prick sliding slickly through Stiles’ fingers. His hands stayed between them, one hard against Stiles’ pounding heart. Everything was rough except the cries he made, hot, little, hungry gasps that drove Stiles on. Stiles knew only what he liked, but Derek took it as if he liked it too, growing louder.

He broke on a word, a name that Stiles hadn’t heard since he was a boy, and moved, but only to seize Stiles’ hand and hold it by the wrist as he spilled over it. His seed was hot and fine, sticky ribbons that Stiles squirmed for. Stiles could be still, but the pleasing rush at his fingertips did not make him want to be. He moved, slowing only his hand as he milked out a few more drops.

Still a fool, but still brave, he waited until Derek had released his wrist to bring his hand up to his face. He pulled back enough to inhale the new scent then licked the drops from his index finger, swallowing quickly when he wasn’t sure of the taste. Not sweet, not good though not bad, more like the dirt, or the earth, and something in it made him drop his head to Derek’s throat as he rocked against Derek’s hip.

He had touched Derek. The thought was better than any whiskey. Stiles put his sticky hand down to his trousers and pushed into it, over and over again, finally slipping it through hastily undone buttons to touch himself. Derek inhaled noisily, and Stiles shook his head. When he spilled, they would talk, but not until then. He vowed it to himself, then broke his own vow to push out words into Derek’s skin.

“This is not gratitude. This is a gift, Derek Hale.” Dirty and rough, with the scene of the skirmish not far away and with it bodies lucky to be buried. But not Scott. Scott was not one of them. Stiles wasn’t sure he was as quiet as he ought to be anymore. His gasp as he came off rang out in the clearing, hot as it came back to him from Derek’s skin. When he stopped shivering, he put his hands back on Derek’s shoulders. New stains wouldn’t be noticed among so many old ones.

Derek held him tight with the one hand. “I did it for you.” He met Stiles’ eyes and Stiles lowered his head to bury his face into Derek's shoulder. It was the only way to keep himself from shouting.

“I know," he whispered, too lowly for a regular man to hear, and felt Derek's hand tighten on him.


End file.
